Vera Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

They made it out of the woods before dawn. Vera half-carried Silas the whole way, his bad leg dragging. Her torn shoulder throbbed with every step. By the time they reached shelter, an empty shack at the tree line, she could barely lift her arm. The demon had fled wounded, but it would heal in its lair. Every hour they spent hurt was an hour it grew strong again. "Sit," she told Silas. He dropped against the wall, jaw tight. Silas was the man who had shown her how to track the demon by its bleeding mark. He was also the man who had wanted to use her as bait. She still did not trust him. But he was all she had, and his leg was worse than her shoulder. She cut her sleeve away and looked at her wound. Three deep gouges, black at the edges. Demon claws left rot behind. If she did not clean them, the arm would fail before she ever swung a blade again. "You need heat," Silas said. His flat voice had steadied overnight. "Fire and a knife. The demon's poison spreads. Burn it out or lose the arm." Vera hated the answer. But she knew he was right. She built a small fire and set her blade in the coals until the steel glowed. Then she poured the last of her water over the gouges and washed the black grit free. "Hold me still," she said. Silas gripped her good arm with both hands. "Bite down." She pressed the hot blade to the first gouge. Pain tore through her. She screamed into her sleeve and shoved the steel down the wound. Her glasses fogged. The stink of burnt flesh filled the shack. She dragged the blade across the second gouge, then the third. Her whole body shook. When it was done, she fell back, gasping. The black rot was gone. The skin was seared shut, ugly and raw, but clean. "Now yours," she said. Silas set his leg straight while she splinted it with boards torn from the wall. He did not scream. He only breathed hard through his teeth and stared at the fire. By afternoon Vera could lift her arm again. She flexed her fingers around her blade's grip. The wound still burned, but it held. She stood without swaying. Silas got up too, leaning on a broken plank as a crutch. He could walk, slow but steady. "We can move," she said. "Barely," Silas answered. "But it can move too, now. It's had all day to heal." Vera looked toward the woods. The demon was strong again. So was she. The race to catch it wounded was over. Whatever they found in that lair now would be whole, and waiting, and it knew her face. She sheathed her blade and stepped out into the fading light.